Columbia University’s campus was disrupted again Tuesday when masked protesters stormed an Israeli studies class and handed out anti-Semitic literature to outraged students.
As students reviewed the syllabus for the first day of the History of Modern Israel class—the only class on Israel at the university that taught by an Israeli historian – four masked protestors wearing keffiyehs burst in while preaching an anti-Israel sermon while being filmed.
“We’re giving you the inside scoop on Columbia University’s normalization of genocide,” said one masked protester.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator holds a flag on the roof of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York, US, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The disruptors then handed out anti-Semitic leaflets to students showing a boot stomping on a Jewish star and what appeared to be a Hamas terrorist waving a burning Israeli flag as professor Avi Shilon tried to restore stability to his classroom.
“The enemy will not survive tomorrow,” said one ominous leaflet above a picture of Hamas terrorists waving rifles on top of a vehicle.
“Burn Zionism to the ground,” read another.
Columbia University said it was “expediting” the investigation and working to identify the intruder on Wednesday, among other measures taken in response to the incident.
Professor Shilon, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Baghdad, told the story Fox News Digital he felt a responsibility to his students to keep order, but he did not want to “start a fight in the class.” He said he tried to invite the protesters to join his class and engage intellectually with the issues, but they had no interest in doing so.
“I told those conquerors, ‘Listen, if you want to talk about conflict, join the class. Read the readings, express your opinion, let’s discuss it.’ That’s the nature of academia,” Shilon said. “They were not interested, they just shouted ‘genocide.’ They took photos as if they had ‘conquered’ the class.”
“Yeah, we’re trying to learn, that’s why we’re at Columbia,” Lisha Baker, a senior at the university majoring in Middle East, told Fox News Digital.
Baker said he was “pumped” to take Shilon’s course, saying it is the only course offered at the university that is not taught in college that is “overtly anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.”
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“There is nothing worse at Columbia than the Middle East Studies department, it’s an absolute disaster,” said Columbia Students Supporting Israel President Eden Yadegar. Yadegar is the plaintiff in a Title VI discrimination suit against the university.
Yadegar said Shilon’s class is important because “ideological diversity” is sorely lacking on campus, and Columbia has professors who teach courses on Israel who praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist rampage.
“No less incredible were the sights… of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through the fence of an Israeli prison or flying over it in the air,” wrote a Colombian professor Joseph Massad just one day after the heinous terrorist attacks in which 1,200 Israelis were killed, 250 kidnapped and thousands wounded. Massad teaches a course on the development of Zionism.
Shilon said the protesters initially looked so much like members of Hamas that he spoke to them in Arabic at first. Only at a second glance did he realize that they were protesters who wanted to disrupt his watch.
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“It was shocking to see students, at a prestigious Ivy League school, threatening other students. I felt like someone had invaded my home,” Shilon said. – They don’t understand the conflict at all.
Shilon said he prides himself on being an objective scholar, exposing his students to both stories about Israel’s formation in 1948.
Baker said the real goal of the protesters was to stifle intellectual discussion about the Arab-Israeli conflict at the university, because they are “insecure” about their own worldview.
“They’re not educated on this issue … They can’t keep up, they can’t keep up with the conversation,” Baker said. “I think there’s also – I think it really stems from an existential war in the Middle East, there’s a real war, but also a war in academia among people like this to erase Israel from the narrative. And erase Israel from the maps.”
It’s Columbia accusations of anti-Semitism are not unknown.
The university was hit by months of anti-Israel encampments on campus that culminated in the violent takeover of Hamilton Hall, in which a university janitor was held captive by an angry mob. NYPD officers reclaimed the dorm in May 2024.
After the incident, Columbia University Interim President Katrina Armstrong released a statement saying “we strongly condemn this disruption, as well as the flyers that contained violent images that are unacceptable on our campus and in our community.”
Anti-Israel protesters hang signs from Columbia University in New York on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Columbia announced earlier today that its campus will remain closed “until circumstances permit,” after students occupied Hamilton Hall early this morning. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital)
Shilon said that after the incident, Columbia offered to have security guard his classroom, which he declined.
Yadegar, who says she has been the victim of numerous anti-Semitic attacks on campus, is pessimistic that any real change will occur to protect Jewish students’ ability to learn and engage freely on campus.
“Words mean little without actions to back them up. When Columbia tolerates this kind of behavior, there’s no reason not to expect it to continue,” she said.
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“It is the university’s responsibility to stop these incidents before they happen,” Shilon said.
